40 years of social photography
Jean-Louis Courtinat
For almost forty years, Jean-Louis Courtinat has been driven by the challenge of photographing sensitive subjects with sensitivity. Here, the adjective “sensitive”, which describes the subjects of his reports, takes second place to the noun “sensitivity”, which describes the way he looks at people who have been damaged by illness, poverty and homelessness. His approach is refined without being affected, compassionate without being sentimental, intimate without being voyeuristic. His photographs do not show men, women and children who are frail or weak, but rather who are restored in their dignity as human beings. They give them substance, bearing witness to everything they have been through.
Almost thirty years separate “Les damnés de Nanterre” and his investigation, “Des êtres sans importance,” part of which was produced in connection with the major commission “Radioscopie de la France.” In both of these collections, which are archived at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, we can see the same quality of relationship between the photographer and each of the protagonists in his photographs: the quality of their presence is a result of the time he has taken to understand them.
Preview
Almost thirty years separate “Les damnés de Nanterre” and his investigation, “Des êtres sans importance,” part of which was produced in connection with the major commission “Radioscopie de la France.” In both of these collections, which are archived at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, we can see the same quality of relationship between the photographer and each of the protagonists in his photographs: the quality of their presence is a result of the time he has taken to understand them.
Courtinat is a humanist, following in the footsteps of Robert Doisneau, whom he assisted when he joined the Rapho agency, his first mentor having been Martine Franck when he was with Viva. Not only is he a humanist, he is also a moralist, in the noble and historical sense of the word, like Jean de La Fontaine. His aim is not to lecture or moralize, but simply to be fair and truthful. Being fair here is as much about the right distance between the photographer and the subject when the picture is taken as it is about the right amount of time taken beforehand. To Courtinat, it is also a matter of integrity, so his photographs are never cropped. And though black and white film is his preferred medium, he does not subscribe to any form of Manichaeism; gray is more his color. The softness of gray serves images that are not just “taken”, but are based on understanding, and are enduring rather than raw. In an increasingly polarized world, gray allows complexity and nuance to be expressed.
Courtinat’s photographs are powerful and well-constructed, but he is not a formalist: form emerges from the moment, composition from emotion. To him, social photography does not mean using an accessory, an empty space or something outside the frame to symbolize suffering. Rather, it means facing reality and photographing the person who is present as the essential subject. It means capturing the double meaning of the face as described by the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas for whom experiencing alterity allows us to perceive the vulnerability of the Other and thereby feel responsible towards them. Fairness and truthfulness pave the way to human justice.
The moral of Jean-Louis Courtinat’s photographs might be that everyone does what they can, starting with the photographer. But this should not be seen as a sign of resignation. Rather, it means that within the range of possibilities that are open to us, the sensitivity of a gesture or an expression is also what allows us to live together as a society.
Héloïse Conésa Chief Curator of Cultural Heritage Head of the Contemporary Photography Collection at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France
